12 Best Dividend Paying Stocks to Buy Now

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6. AbbVie Inc. (NYSE:ABBV)

Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 89

AbbVie Inc. (NYSE:ABBV) is a pharmaceutical company that was spun off from Abbott Laboratories in 2013 and is worth considering for a long-term portfolio. One of the strongest reasons to invest in the company is its dividend. The company’s recent dividend yield stood at a solid 2.9%, compared with just 1.2% for the broader market. Even better, the dividend has been growing steadily, with room for more increases.

Over the past five years, AbbVie Inc. (NYSE:ABBV) has raised its dividend by an average annual rate of 7%. The annual payout recently reached about $6.56 per share, up from $5.20 in 2021 and $3.59 in 2018, showing strong growth over time.

AbbVie Inc. (NYSE:ABBV)’s payout ratio, which is the portion of earnings paid out as dividends, is also at a comfortable level of less than 50%. This gives the company plenty of flexibility to continue raising dividends in the future.

Like other drugmakers, AbbVie Inc. (NYSE:ABBV) has experienced the loss of patent protection on key products, most notably its blockbuster Humira. However, this was expected, and the company has built a strong pipeline of around 90 treatments. In 2024 alone, it invested nearly $11 billion in research and development, with most of those treatments now in the mid to late stages of progress.

AbbVie Inc. (NYSE:ABBV) currently offers a quarterly dividend of $1.64 per share and has been growing its payouts for 53 consecutive years, which makes it one of the best dividend paying stocks to buy.

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